neds - get off the pavement!

[Weegie]

No pubs though the Cadbury family were strict quackers.

You mean they were religious about keeping their ducks in a row?

 

[magnatom]

Govan is an area I know well. I cycle through part of it now (and work just along the road from it) and I used to use the underground station and buses there quite a lot in the past.

The Sheildhall end of Govan has improved in my opinion, i.e. luv cafe etc, and I think it will continue to improve, especially with the huge upgrade to the Southern General that is now underway (£840m).

I agree that Elder Park is in pretty poor nick, and could certainly do with some serious money spent on it, and that the area itself needs an injection of money and good planning.

The Evening Times (shockingly) ran a good series of article on the gangs in Govan and other areas. The local youths really don't have much to do, and feel restricted in their own patches. It really sounds like a hard life. I do however, whilst agreeing that the area and poverty play a significant role in the lifes and upbringing of these kids, I also feel that poor parenting plays a big part as well. I see kids, young kids out on the streets late at night. There is no way I would allow my kids to do that, and there was no way that my parents did (we lived in council housing, and due to my fathers death when I was young depended on my sisters relatively low income for many years).


Govan certainly needs more investment, and as you say, it needs the correct focus. Business parks and high cost private housing don't help the local people, it just tends to drive them elsewhere...

 

[WeeE]

.. I also feel that poor parenting plays a big part as well. I see kids, young kids out on the streets late at night. There is no way I would allow my kids to do that.....
Govan certainly needs more investment, and as you say, it needs the correct focus. Business parks and high cost private housing don't help the local people, it just tends to drive them elsewhere...

I agree. At one in the morning, there are kids of primary-school age hanging about in my street. Kids of 14 or 15 stay up all night in summer getting drunk. But they are a sad minority. I also see a lot of parents going to great lengths to give their kids a better life. They have varying levels of effective know-how (unfortunately) but all in all, honestly, I think there are more of those parents.

As to expensive housing and business parks driving local people away - that's exactly what developers want. And so do the city council, it seems. They've now realised Govan is a potentially profitable bit of real estate, even without the Victorian legacy.

Across the river, all the old show people who had lived quietly for years in a wee mini village - they'd created gardens and everything on the waste land - were unceremoniously kicked out to make way for the ludicrously naed Glasgow Harbour (ludicrous because the first thing done to prepare the area was to fill in all the old docks and make harbourage impossible. The Clyde reduced to a sheet of water to look at.

What's really done the place good are the local housing associations: providing a good ix of housing types and a mix of rent and shared-ownership in each development. But I'm afraid they've already become too cosy with the developer/architect cartels (whether by naivety or corruption I don't know) and lost sight of the fact that they exist to serve the community, not to export the communityand import a wealthier crowd.

 

[WeeE]

Here's the great irony: the transport museum is being built on the riverside opposite Govan, literally within a stone's throw () but how can a parent on benefits even get the kids there?

 

[blazed]

Here's the great irony: the transport museum is being built on the riverside opposite Govan, literally within a stone's throw () but how can a parent on benefits even get the kids there?

You use benefits like its some sort of anchor weighing them down. How about they get a job.

 

[Weegie]

You use benefits like its some sort of anchor weighing them down. How about they get a job.

Partial +1. Don't tar the whole of Govan with one brush. Its population is diverse, with with good people trying to live decent lives under difficult circumstances, and feckless morons who don't give a toss about anything or anyone. The former should be recognised and supported, the latter need a right good kick up the arse.

 

[WeeE]

The fact is that the jobs left. It's one of those places that never recovered from the Thatcher years. And many people here are under-employed, scraping along on a couple of part-time, minimum-wage jobs. There's a huge amount of stress and ill-health. The wider area that Govan is part of has been for years one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Europe. The problems are real, and they don't need peanuts talking about arses - it just doesn't help. The people you want to kick up the arse often have kids, and it's the kids who suffer from kneejerk reactions like yours.

 

[blazed]

The fact is that the jobs left. It's one of those places that never recovered from the Thatcher years. And many people here are under-employed, scraping along on a couple of part-time, minimum-wage jobs. There's a huge amount of stress and ill-health. The wider area that Govan is part of has been for years one of the most deprived areas in the whole of Europe. The problems are real, and they don't need peanuts talking about arses - it just doesn't help. The people you want to kick up the arse often have kids, and it's the kids who suffer from kneejerk reactions like yours.

People can always help themselves. Im not gonna feel sorry for them because they live in a shoot hole, nobody forces them to.

 

[WeeE]

People can always help themselves. Im not gonna feel sorry for them because they live in a shoot hole, nobody forces them to.

People certainly don't need superficial morons feeling sorry for them: people in urban areas just need fewer greedy, antisocial, oblivious suburbanites hogging all the municipal resources (from park maintenance to road space to public-transport and local-infrastructure investment) and making the place shittier.

It's not an accident that the park is under-maintained and subject to land-grabs, it's not an accident that there's no bridge for miles (but one every 200 yards upstream) it's not an accident that the most expensive ring of motorways in Europe is still being built that fences carless people in and makes walking routes long, highly unpleasant, and dangerous for kids, it's not an accident that the speed limit is kept high and the main high-street road allowed to be clogged by all-day free parking by people who neither live nor work here: all of these things are for other people's convenience, at the expense of the people you display your contempt for.

Oh, yeah, and - these kids were helping themselves, or trying to, and what they got for it was abuse and downright dangerous bullying.

 

[Weegie]

...The problems are real, and they don't need peanuts talking about arses...

Hey, if you really want to give all the real neds of Govan a nice big hug, that's entirely up to you. But please don't call me an peanut.

Edit just to clarify : I thought what you did for those lads was really nice, and your original post is heartfelt. But I personally wouldn't have referred to them as "neds". A ned is something entirely less pleasant.

 

[WeeE]

please don't call me an peanut.

Edit just to clarify : I thought what you did for those lads was really nice, and your original post is heartfelt.

Sure - please don't be one, and I won't.

 

[Weegie]

Sure - please don't be one, and I won't.

Name calling is never acceptable. It's against the posting guidelines, and in any case, it just makes you look childish and never furthers your argument.

Also, whether you like it or not, everyone is entitled to voice their opinion here.

 

[WeeE]

Well, if you want to get all pompous and proper about it, I didn't call you a name: you yourself put on the cap that fit. Congratulations on another strawman.

And did I suggest in any way that you're not entitled to your argument? Not at all. Congratulatrions on another strawman. I'm just suggesting your argument is knee-jerk, reactionary, puerile and ill-informed.

And did I suggest that I don't like the free intercourse of this forum? Not at all. Congratulations on packing a third completely spurious accusation into a three-line post.

I suppose I'm just prejudiced against people who have screen names that more or less announce they've taken their identity from what Edinburgh novelists like to call Glaswegians, rather than (if you must) the name that Glaswegians actually used for themselves before the book came out. To me, it bespeaks a certain ersatz and perhaps spurious identification with an outsider's view of the city and its citizens.

.

 

[Weegie]

Re: my screen name, you're reading WAY too much into it. I just preferred the look of Weegie to Arsehole66

 

[WeeE]

There isn't really anything else TO read into it, not when you put location "weegieland". But I'm really, really not gonna give into temptation to say the other one'd suit you better.